Posted
by
kdawson
on Sunday October 04, 2009 @04:55PM
from the honeymoon-with-barf-bag dept.

Matt_dk writes "The US firm Space Adventures said on Friday it will be able to send two space tourists into orbit at once from 2012 onwards, on Soyuz spacecraft. 'We have been working on this project for a number of years,' said Sergey Kostenko, the head of the company's office in Russia. Each Soyuz will carry two tourists and a professional astronaut. One of the tourists will have to pass a year-and-a-half training course as a flight engineer. Space Adventures has been authorized by the Russian Federal Space Agency Roscosmos to select and contract candidates for space tourist trips." Meanwhile, the AP has a look back at the delays and disappointments in the commercial spaceflight industry since Burt Rutan captured the Ansari X Prize 5 years ago — no space company has yet announced a date for commercial availability.

It's good to see that a few fortunate (i.e., very rich) people will get the chance to go out into space. But when will space travel become as cheap as driving to the corner store? The problem with space travel is that the aerospace industry is still using the same chemistry-based propulsion technologies that first gave us the ability to fly. Using rocket propulsion for space flight is dangerous, primitive and extremely expensive. There is no way we are going to colonize the moon or the solar system beyond with chemical rockets.

Be of good cheer, however. The aerospace and energy industries will soon undergo a seismic paradigm shift. A recent reevaluation of our understanding of the causality of motion leads to the inevitable conclusion that we are immersed in a huge lattice of energetic particles. Soon we'll have vehicles that will move almost anywhere at tremendous speeds, negotiate right angle turns without slowing down and without incurring any damage due to inertial effects. Floating cities, unlimited clean energy, earth to Mars in hours, New York to Beijing in minutes. That's the future of energy and travel.

What do you define as a 'geriatric'? Ten years ago nobody had heard of Google. 15 years ago nobody had heard of Viagra. 20 years ago the internet was an novelty item that was little used outside of academia and the US Government.

So now us old folks can use Google on the Internet to go buy Viagra. The future is here and we're loving it! Go USA!